Year 203

We moved one of the riftgates back to Freeka, and located it right in the valley. Alka and the rest of them returned, except Roon and Johann who continued the fight and expansion.

It was frustrating to expand, because of how magically sparse the environment was, even with the recent gradual improvements. Since the demon king ended, I felt mana slow, very very slowly, trickle back to the world.

As it is, my expansions essentially relied and drained mana from the Central continent, in order to support my trees and my forces on the demon world. This was because there was a shortfall in the natural mana and ‘life’ in the soil, so I had to top up that shortfall with my own mana. This was similar to the moon, but as my moonbase’s trees grew, they were able to generate more mana passively, and a few years ago, was mana-neutral on my overall mana-production.

The fact that I had to constantly support and regenerate my beetles and trees at the battlefronts also amplified the mana drain on the central continent.

In the long run, though, things are positive. At the rate of natural mana recovery in the world, in a few decades, my trees would turn mana-positive, and I would be able to mount a more coherent and decisive push towards all the major structures of the demons.

There was no reason to expand when doing so only increased the mana use, without the capture of any particularly unique structures.

All these were lessons, for our next planned invasion for the demon world.

Alka also had other ideas. One of which, was to develop a supermassive star mana bomb. Something with so much mana that we could throw at the tower of void mana, and hopefully disrupt the demon king while it is still gestating.

I was somewhat skeptical of the star mana bomb’s chances of actually destroying the demon king, because I’ve seen the demon king’s body gestating really deep in the ground, and I doubt a supermassive explosion would be able to reach deep into the world’s core. Still, destroying the void tower would mean they couldn’t come to our world that fast, since it would take out the fuel that supported the pathway to our world.

It may buy us some time, for little to no cost. It may possibly also weaken the demon king, such that we would be able to survive it with better odds.

Of course, Alka also proposed to sink the tower in that deep tunnel, and then detonate the bomb. The idea of detonating such a powerful bomb underground probably would be very damaging to the world, but it does mean an explosion closer to the gestating demon king.

Possible, but more moving parts. It’s more difficult to send a bomb in the tunnel where my roots or trees can’t reach. I could, theoretically, have a tree next to the tower, teleport it right there.

Anyway, Alka was thus focused on developing the bomb. He already had some ideas, gathered from his past research, on how to make a large star-mana bomb.

Ideas that he quickly pitched to Prabu and Colette, and he shared our findings, as well.

“This is Aeon’s idea?” Prabu immediately asked.

“Not really. More like mine, but he consented to the budget for a super star-mana bomb, meant specifically to activate on contact with the void tower.”

The problem was, star mana, just like void mana, both had corrosive effects on their containers. The objects that hold these things could not hold them for very long, unless they were made by the heroes’ through their special [hero forge], and in those cases, the mana stored evaporated very slowly over time. Even my specialised potatoes eventually decayed, and the stored mana leaked out, though they did last quite long.

Only my own 300 star mana did not cause any decay, and I suspect that the soul may be the most common object that could hold star mana without these storage problems. That, of course, implied it could be possible to make living star mana batteries.

Could I create artificial souls specifically to store star mana or void mana? I see Stella is able to accept and handle large quantities of void mana without much issues, even if it did make her soul transform into this pitch black mass of... thing.

Despite how her soul looks, her body clearly didn’t suffer for it. She was healthy by all measures, and her body, even though drenched with void mana, didn’t seem different. Perhaps the soul had a passive effect of ‘controlling’, ‘manipulating’ and ‘processing’ mana, such that it didn’t harm itself.

It was a worthwhile idea, even if one I previously never considered because of how many artificial minds I could support. Nowadays, with a continent’s worth of trees, and more, it’s really not much of a problem to use artificial minds more freely, even if they were just made to be sentient batteries.

“Worth exploring?” I asked Patreeck.

“It really depends how much mana an artificial mind can store. However, based on what we’ve seen, it’s likely that they won’t be as effective as a fully formed soul.”

I paused as those words sunk in. Patreeck clearly had more data than me, even if he is functionally a part of me. If Patreeck’s speculation are true, mana responded more strongly to the inner part of the soul. No matter, I had to try.

I created one of my tuberous storage in an uninhabited part of the central continent, and created an artificial mind for it. This part went normally.

Then I injected it with star mana. At least, the 300 star mana I had. I borrowed a little bit more from the heroes, and injected a little bit more. Then like a balloon that suddenly had a hole, it just shrunk, and died.

“1,000.” Patreeck said.

“That’s too little.”

I did the same, this time with void mana. We had void mana from Stella, and those I previously stole from the demon king. They were already in various states of decay, some of them only had less than 10% of the void mana originally.

I wonder whether this could be some kind of evaporation loss, and the vessel only controlled the degree of evaporation loss?

Or, is the soul actually producing mana, thus it offsets the evaporation loss? But artificial souls could produce mana too! Patreeck seems to think it’s likely that fully formed souls can produce star mana or void mana, thus their production of these mana types keep their vessel full. Sadly, I had no way of testing whether mana-evaporation or mana-loss is better when there’s a soul, because my artificial minds don’t produce these mana types.

With normal mana, it doesn’t seem to have this issue. Or, is it likely that on Treehome, the environment has sufficient mana that there’s no mana loss due to differences in mana density?

I know that I have to support my trees on the demon world, or my new expansions on the moon...

I checked my floating tree, floating in the pitch black darkness of the void, clinging to a massive shard of what was once the Cometworld. It doesn’t need mana from me, because it produces a little bit of mana.

My artificial minds quickly helped me build up some data sets, and then I realised that each of my clones produced a small amount of their own mana, and then, on top of that small passive production, it also absorbed and amplified mana from the environment. In places where there was very little mana, like the demon world or the moon, this part of my natural mana producing abilities were weak.

In short, my clones were best strategically placed where there’s a lot of natural mana, and that would significantly improve my mana amount. It’s like finding the correct spot to put a wind turbine.

Once my clones were placed, I couldn’t move them, unless I killed my clones. There’s also a gestation period for the seeds to reappear, and I would have to contend with losing my connection to that place.

-

“So Aeon managed to invade the demon world.” Chung repeated on the magical communication device. It was a meeting joined by my senior Valthorns and the otherworlders as well. Well, except Meela and Alexis who’s in the North. But anyway, now that we had something resembling a plan, we needed help.

“Yes, and Alka proposed that we attack the demon world before the demon king invades. I can see merit in the argument, since we can save lives by preventing the invasion in the first place.” There were no official tallies of how many people died during the parasite wars, but my Valthorns’ observed that even in well-defended towns, the population was down by about twenty percent. So, the parasite war was probably one of the higher ones in terms of fatalities because refugees couldn’t escape, and even if they did, they were suspected of harboring the parasites.

It was a grim episode that I was glad ended well. Had they been more intelligent, we would be dealing with a persistent, ongoing issue.

Prabu did most of the explanation, where he went over Stella’s void portal abilities, my ability to resonate with the rift gates and sneak my vines through the gates, and then, lastly, my tree clones.

Deep in my valley, the rift gate, now surrounded by hundreds of mages and researchers, was undergoing reconfiguration.

“So that’s something from a demon world?” Chung and Hafiz were on the magical communicator. “A rift gate?”

“Yes. The demons build these paths across worlds, and these paths gather in the skies above over decades. Alka and Stella think it might be possible to open these paths earlier, and invade them before the demons are even ready for us.”

Alka then explained about the void tower, and the giant circular gate, which I suspected, was the primary gate.

“Don’t we need that primary gate, then?” Chung asked.

“Alka and Stella suspect that it may not be necessary since the astral path is already there, just not fully activated. They want to use the world’s core mana to open a small gate, and send one of Aeon’s clones there, and well, bomb the shit out of them.”

“It’s interesting.” Chung nodded. Strangely, the god’s inhibitions didn’t attack the heroes, because, after all, this was a conversation about destroying demons. Just not demons in this world. Alka and Stella were both well-educated on the [hero] class mental overrides, so we made no mention of gods. But we reminded Alka and Stella to not speak of the ‘ending the cycle part’, since that triggered the hero’s mental blocks the last time I touched this subject with Prabu. For now, we were laser focused on defeating the next demon king, and that seemed to avoid triggering the overrides. “What’s our role?”

“The plan is frankly quite simple.” Alka repeated. “We’ll bomb the void tower and try our best to cause massive damage, and if it doesn’t kill the demon king, Aeon will teleport all of you to the demon world, and you can fight all out there. We’ll provide cover fire and clear the grounds.”

Prabu nodded. “I think it makes a lot of sense. We can fight the demon king offensively, likely in a weaker state thanks to the bombs. No need to hold back, no collateral damage because the demon world is uninhabited.”

“Are the demons stronger there? In their world?” Chung asked.

Alka paused. “We... I don't have enough data to say for sure. From the one or two worlds Aeon has visited, it’s possible that the mobs are stronger. We don’t know whether there is any change in the strength of the demon king.”

Chung was surprisingly cooperative. “It’s a decent idea in principle. Once the gate is active, then let’s meet again and go through our plans.”

With their agreement obtained, Alka and Stella now worked on actually getting the rift gates to work in reverse. From our world, to theirs.

-

Back on the demon world, Roon and Johann fought the horde of demons from the demonic spawning pools. We observed that some of these pools have ‘regenerated’ and were somehow repaired, and the speed of this recovery seemed aligned to the recovery in the natural ambient mana of this world.

This swampy demon world used to be a world with life. And now, in the areas where my trees dominated, I began observing the effects, as some normal creatures spawned for the first time. Only small ones, because they were insects, but the fact that creatures were created by the system meant we were undoing the demon’s hold.

Horns and a small army of beetle commanders complemented Roon and Johann in the battle for the demon world.

This was a long war, and Horns loved it. Horns lived for war, it seemed, and even though he got squashed a few times, he never stopped returning to the front lines. Hytreerion, my massive walker, was also pleased that it was useful for a change, rather than being mostly useless back on Treehome, since it was able to storm through enemy lines with its massive size.

This was a war that would only gain in intensity, since the recovering ambient mana of the world meant both sides would gain strength. I could deploy more trees and more beetles, and for the demons, they could regenerate their spawning pools, spawn more demons, and spawn stronger demons.

Still, the recovering mana also meant the demon forces noticed my trees near the massive hole of the demon king. A location I wanted but was not able to hold due to the sheer distance from my main clone body, as my trees and beetles were overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of demons.

Thankfully, now Roon and Johann both were up for some scouting.

The deep hole of the demon king, now flooded with normal demons, and they saw the collapsed towers and the rubble somehow had vanished. The entire deep hole transformed into a massive spawning pool.

But because there were too many demons, they did not attempt to engage. Not with just two of them. It was likely that the demon spawning pool, given its size, was some kind of pre-demon king pool?

Still, after that spying, and all the fighting on the demon world, they were both really emotionally drained, and Roon requested to return to Treehome. There was something about fighting in the lifeless world that was just more emotionally taxing than normal.

Edna called it the “Long Term Dungeon Syndrome.” Similar to fighters who’ve spent too long in the dungeons, they would crave some normalcy.

Oh well, I suppose I would need to start considering some kind of otherworld combat roster. Maybe that’s what happened with Prabu and Colette, and their snack withdrawals. They needed an emotional base, and fighting long periods away from home drained that ‘battery’.

-

There was something else I had to work on, which was, core mana. The activation of the astral path seemed to rely on the core mana, though it is possible to wait for the rifts to open, and then only invade. But we wanted the option to invade at our own time.

So I had to figure out core mana.

I intensified my analysis of the Cometworld Shard, and concluded that I needed to dig deep. Much, much deeper. What kind of creature would have core mana?

I already reached my limit on Treehome in terms of depth. I couldn’t get deeper, even with all the intermediate trees in the way. This was the secret at the center of the world.

> Lilies, do you know how to contact the will of the world? <

Ah. I got similar replies from Aria, who didn’t even know about the will of the world.

I only have one seed left. Unless I could gain more levels, I’d have to use it strategically.

“Lumoof, when you were on the Threeworlds, were there any really, really deep places? Like chasms or cracks that led all the way into the core?”

Lumoof, naturally got what I was trying to get at, and shook his head. “Not that I know of, unless the Sandpeople and the Centaurs are hiding it. Do you want me to ask?”

“Then we should aim elsewhere. Let’s go to another world.” I suppose Lumoof’s job scope now expanded to also look for sources of core mana, usually in really, really deep places.

There had to be a world where there’s already a natural crack in the world. Such things were common in fantasy after all. Places where the world ended, and it led to the great beyond.

Threeworlds, Cometworld and Treehome had been typical planets, but not all worlds are like that. If I wanted core mana, I needed to find a world where the core... isn’t in the center of a spherical world.

Lumoof nodded. “Yes boss.”

Maybe the next world won’t have my answer, but we had to try. Our next best choice was a stray world similar to the Cometworld, where it’s core was exposed in some way.

I then thought about my little trigger happy Reef friend.

> Reefy. <

>Do you know any deep, deep place?<

>Deeper. Much deeper. < Like, far deeper than the Marianas. Even my own underground trees have gone a lot deeper.

I contemplated that question for a moment. Is the Will, someone? >Well. Yes. Maybe.<

>If you could, please.<

I actually have no idea what Reefy’s been up to underwater, but it seemed to be pretty stable, so I presumed it to be alright.